With back healed, odds stacked against him, Brian Bowles confident for WEC 42 title bout

As Bowles prepares to meet Miguel Torres in the main event of tonight’s VERSUS-broadcast “WEC 42: Torres vs. Bowles,” it’s not the first time he’s been focused on facing the champ.

And as Bowles recently told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com), this time he’s even better than before.

“Training camp was 100 percent,” Bowles said. “It was better than usual because I had more confidence in my back.

“The injury’s always been there, and I never took care of it right. Now I took care of it right, and I just knew it was a lot stronger this time than it ever has been.”

Bowles and Torres were originally scheduled to meet in April, but nagging back injury forced Bowles to give his position up to Takeya Mizugaki at WEC 40. With the injury now completely healed, Bowles said the extra time has given him every opportunity to prepare for Torres’ impressive skills.

“I think [the extra time to prepare] is good,” Bowles said. “I just feel so good for this fight, and I’m not nervous. I don’t know what it is, if it’s just that my training camp went so well or that I just had plenty of time to get the nerves out of the way and just set that aside and come out here and not be nervous and know what I’ve got to do.”

Bowles hasn’t fought since December, and he’s fielded frequent questions about his layoff. But the challenger said he isn’t concerned about any type of ring rust.

“I’m not really worried about it,” Bowles said. “I’m kind of used to six months between fights, and it’s not that much difference between six and eight (months). I’m not really too worried about it.

“When I was coming up, it was harder to find fights, so it always a bit of a layoff between fights. I’m used to this pretty much.”

Bowles said he’s also not worried about the massive attention that surrounds Torres and the fact that many observers have already awarded the fight to the champ.

“I think I’ve been the underdog in most of my fights so far, and it worked out well,” Bowles said. “[Torres] is the champion. He’s been a dominant champ. I should be the underdog. If I was as dominant as him, then I would expect whoever came up on me to be the underdog.”

Bowles is saying all the right things in the days leading up to the fight. But in just his eighth professional fight, does the Georgia native have what it takes to unseat what many observers consider to be one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world.

“Nobody’s game is perfect,” Bowles said. “Everybody has holes. I see things that I’d like to try to exploit.

“If I impose my will it will work out. If I don’t, it won’t.”

For complete coverage of WEC 42, stay tuned to the MMA Rumors section of MMAjunkie.com.

The Latest

In this week’s Trading Shots, Danny Downes and Ben Fowlkes look at Ronda Rousey’s 34-second victory over Bethe Correia at UFC 190 and try to put it into terms that capture the moment without getting swept away by it.

A total of 26 fighters got their chance to shine on Saturday as part of UFC 190 at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena. Now that UFC 190 is in the books, it’s time to commence MMAjunkie’s “Three Stars” ceremony.

The man known for cranking submissions to the point of injury added eye-gouging to his repertoire. But is the controversy of Rousimar Palhares too essential to his bizarre, awful appeal for his employers to take any meaningful action against him?